Friday, April 23, 2010

4月23日 Day 30: TGIF

Well, I'm a weakling. I've gone completely without American food-- but on Day 30, I cracked... and went to TGIFriday's.

I've NEVER been to a TGIFriday's. EVER. But damn it was so good. It felt amazing to have some quality deep fried American food in my system. I ate buffalo wings, potato skins, calamari, chicken fingers, french fries, onion rings, and some other fried chicken appetizery thing.

*Please note that this deep fried death trap was shared among 4 people, not just me.

I know I'm always criticizing the ugly Americans here-- but Goddammit, tonight, I was one of them: loud, obnoxious, and obese. Haha. There were actually 12 of us in our party who all fit this description. And well... that's about I all I have to say about that.

Today was an odd sort of day, one that definitely warranted our fat feast. This morning, someone threw themselves in front of a train on our line, backing up the subsequent trains for the whole of the morning. Even MY train (the post-rush hour train) was packed full of people. My arm was pretty much jammed into this poor girl's hat as I held on to the handle for dear life. I could feel people breathing, smell their bodies, feel their uncomfortable tension pressing against all sides of me on that train. Luckily it only lasted for about 5 stops when about 90% of the people transferred to a different line.

It really bothers me that this is a common occurrence that isn't really being combatted in Tokyo. If you remember the anti-suicide gates I showed in an earlier post, please know that they're not at every station, only bigger ones. My thoughts on that situation is that they should have them at EVERY station. People who are going to jump in front of the train will find a station that enables them to do so.

Another thing about it that bothers me is everyone's complete nonchalance towards the subject of people REGULARLY throwing themselves in front of the train. The mentality is, "Well, it happens." Sure, that's true if it happens every so often-- but it happens almost every week... is that some kind of indication of something? I mean, suicide in itself is always a selfish act, but in Japan, suicide via the Metro is just downright inconvenient. It makes people late for the jobs that eventually lead them to suicide.

It's days like these that make me feel justified for letting it all hang loose at TGIFriday's with a plate of potato skins. I just wish that more Japanese people would too.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your comments about suicide, totally. It is completely selfish and thoughtless, but their culture believes that life is impermanent, and besides theres just too many people, so if you want to kill yourself, just get out of the way. The irony of course, is that their culture is also loathe to condone people who cause great inconvenience to others, and jumping in front of trains is simply rude...but, it's less messy than hanging or poisoning, which causes inconveniences to others, so there you have it, the lesser of inconveniences.

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